Suthers on Hot Seat Over Misleading Statements

Is the state's 37th attorney general, John Suthers, misleading the public for personal and political gain? Colorado citizens want to know and their calling Suthers out in print.

In a letter to The Denver Post opposing HB 1271 that would restrict prosecutors authority to charge children as adults Suthers wrote, "During the 1970s, 1980s and the early 1990s, Colorado experienced an alarming and continuous increase in violent crime committed by children. The problem culminated in 1993's "summer of violence"   Suthers goes on to claim that crime decreased after prosecutors got the authority to charge children as adults without judicial oversight - a process called "direct filing."

Rick Jones and Lizzy Stephan from The Bell Policy Center in Denver disagree   with Suthers' representation of the fear provoking summer of violence.''

Writing in response to Suthersl claims, Jones and Stephan say, "The research does not support attorney General John Suthers' assertions.... Crime did not decrease in Colorado simply because we shifted power to prosecutors...juvenile crime has gone down everywhere, even in states without direct file; further, research has shown that direct file does not increase public safety.''

Janet MacKenzie of Denver also disagrees with Suthers version of the truth. MacKenzie writes in The Post, "The total number of deaths that summer was substantially below the numbers in previous years, but government officials felt pressured to 'do something.'''

MacKenzie highlights an important aspect of direct filing practice that may point to why Suthers is willing to alter history to defend it, "under our present law, prosecutors are able to weight the guilt of the accused by their direct file before the defense has a right to defend."

Currently Colorado is only one of four states that allow prosecutors to try children as adults without judicial oversight.

John Suthers is known to his critics as "The Grand Inquisitionor" for his decades of work in the Colorado prison and prosecutorial fields. Before becoming the head prosecutor in the state, Suthers was a District Attorney, a one-time director of the Department of Corrections, and a federal prosecutor in Denver.

Suthers is one of the few people in the nation that can say they had a suspect arrested, prosecuted them, and oversaw their incarceration.

Can there hope to be any balance, any perspective left in a person with such a history? Suthers comments in The Post suggest not.

During his time as prosecutor and director of CDOC Suthers participated in an unprecedented increase in convictions, the passage of laws that treated children suspects as adults and sent nonviolent offenders to prison for life - resulting in an explosion in the state's prison population. At its high point the state had over 24,000 inmates and 1 - 28 Colorado citizens under correctional control. Suthers' livelihood has revolved around prosecuting and incarceration - the life of The Grand Inquisitor was good in Colorado.

It is no wonder than that under the promoting of Suthers and two-time prison czar Ari Zavaras the Colorado legislature was convinced to spend $220.4 million taxpayer dollars on a new unneeded prison.

Both Suthers and Zavaras lobbied the legislature saying the prison was critical to the state - first to stem overcrowding, then to stop an increase in institutional violence. Both arguments given by Suthers, like the summer of violence argument, were not true when compared to CDOC statistics and reality.

In 2009 when the state was too broke to open the new CSP 2 multimillion dollar prison and had to cut $260 million from education, Suthers and Zavaras again went to the legislature to get more money for the prison and stop a move by lawmakers to sell the unneeded unopened expensive prison.

Suthers again claimed institutional violence and overcrowding, and added it would be too dangerous not to open the prison under CDOC control.

Now, the multimillion dollar prison that was only open 18 months and only filled to a quarter of its capacity is scheduled to be closed. Independent auditors found Colorado overused segregation and that many of the inmates in the new prison were mental patients who suffered by being locked in isolation for 23 hours a day without mental health treatment.

The auditors also found that Colorado's prison population had been decreasing and there unused beds in many facilities.

Lawmakers are now saying they were lobbied hard by DOC for a prison that wasn't needed and shouldn't have been built. Many feel deceived by Zavaras' and Suthers' testimony and public statements.

Suthers, who spent his entire professional career knee-deep in Colorado's criminal justice system, would have known these things, yet he continued, and continues, to lobby the legislature for more money and power for prisons and prosecutors. Why are we still listening?